A woman who was preparing to shoot a coyote in her backyard on Tuesday accidentally fired her gun into the floor and the ricochet hit a friend.

York County Sheriff’s deputies and rescue workers were called to a house on Elm Street in Limerick at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday for a report of a woman with a hand injury.

Deputies learned that Debra Baptista had spotted a coyote in her back yard staring at her two small dogs on the porch – a Jack Russell Terrier and a puggle, a beagle-pug cross. Baptista hustled her pets inside and went for her .22 rifle to put down the coyote, which had been seen several times recently in the neighborhood, said Sheriff William King.

As Baptista loaded the rifle it discharged accidentally, he said. The round hit the tile floor and though the slug disintegrated, fragments ricocheted and hit her friend Jessica Carroll, 42, in the hand, he said. Carroll suffered scrapes on her right pinky and thumb, he said.

Limington rescue workers treated Carroll at the scene and she later went to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Deputies do not plan on bringing any charges, King said.

The coyote escaped.


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